His right leg and left foot badly borken on the day before the Daytona 500.
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Gibbs won his fourth career Cup title Sunday when driver Kyle Busch won the championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway. At the Glen, fans who waited Gordon out at the garage gate were rewarded with autographs as they told him, “Thanks for all the years Jeff”. Gordon’s helmet was created just for his final race and featured pictures of some of his career highlights.
Rain delayed the start of the event by 90 minutes, but the sellout crowd wasn’t concerned, as they traveled to south Florida to see intense racing and to be on hand for Jeff Gordon’s last race. Gordon finished sixth. Kevin Harvick made a run at Busch but settled for second. “The competitor in me got a little bit-just so caught up in the moment of the race where we took the lead and I got really excited, and I thought, Okay, we’ve got clean air”. He finished the final round strong with three top five finishes.
And although he was less than an hour into this next phase of life Sunday, he seemed emphatic that there would not be pangs to return to a race auto. Keselowski was in front for a race-high 86 laps, while Logano led 72 in the 267-lap race.
Say what you want to about Gordon, but for good or bad, Gordon bridged the gap between what NASCAR was and what NASCAR is now. I don’t think anyone could have dreamed of this year, to be able to go out there and perform the way we did is remarkable.
It was only fitting, then, that it was Gordon who heaped praise afterwards on his one-time Hendrick Motorsports teammate. After running his final race as a full-time NASCAR driver Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the 44-year-old headed into what promised to be a lively Miami retirement party and then retirement itself whenever his headache subsides.
“I don’t know that anybody could have ever dreamt of this year”, Busch said.
Throughout his career, Gordon was lucky enough to work with some of the best crew chiefs in the sport. “We felt like we had to take a really big swing at it”.
Despite missing almost one-third of the season – 11 of the 36 races – Busch came through and won both the Ford EcoBoost 400 and his first NASCAR Sprint Cup crown. Joel I got to live 72 laps and finished fourth in the team Penske for with Kyle Larson fifth in the Chip Ganassi racing Chevrolet.
“This is pretty unbelievable”. Winning his first Sprint Cup Championship and also grabbing a truck series owners’ championship in the process makes this past 48 “a whirlwind”.
It will simply read, Kyle Busch, 2015 champion.
“But we showed what we’re made of and what got us here”, he said. But he has mellowed with marriage, gained perspective after the Daytona wreck, and was determined to be on his feet in the delivery room when wife Samantha delivered their first baby, a boy born in May – right after Busch returned to the race vehicle and celebrated his 30th birthday.
“I knew when those guys got by me, I just didn’t have what they had”, Gordon said about Busch and Harvick.
“I said back then, I’ll say it again, the rehab and then getting back and getting focused was the hardest part, the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through”. It hasn’t sunk in yet; this night tonight is really, really special. Harvick was the defending Sprint Cup series champion.
One consolation was that someone from the Joe Gibbs Racing stable won the championship since the organization won over a third of the races, going 14 of 36 for the season. With Kurt Busch’s title in 2004, Kyle cemented the second pair of brothers in NASCAR history as season champions, joining Terry (1984, 1996) and Bobby Labonte (2000).
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A crash on Lap 96 took Petty out of the race in 35th place, hardly a fitting end for a driver who had accumulated 200 victories and seven championships while rewriting the NASCAR record books. The organization granted Busch a waiver that would allow him to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup provided he won at least one race and finish in the Top 30 in the drivers standings.
